BC-MIDEAST-NYT

JERUSALEM - The Israeli military said the air force attacked a group of Palestinian militants in northern Gaza early Friday as they were about to fire rockets at Israel, a week after the Hamas rulers of Gaza announced that they had secured the agreement of other groups to halt rocket fire in order to prevent retaliatory attacks.

Palestinian medics said four militants were wounded in the air strike, but the Israeli military said one member of the squad, from a small Islamic extremist group influenced by al-Qaida, was killed. Such groups are rivals of Hamas, but the military said it held Hamas responsible for maintaining calm.

Israeli strikes against militants have been rare since the end of last winter's Gaza war. There has been a steep decline in rocket fire since Israel's military offensive ended last January, but the sporadic attacks have continued. Several mortar shells have been launched in the last week.

Hamas, the Islamic group that took control of Gaza in 2007, has an interest in maintaining quiet so as not to upset the delicate negotiations under way for a deal with Israel to exchange a captured soldier, Staff Sgt. Gilad Shalit, for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

The talks, which have been taking place in Cairo through Egyptian and German mediators, are expected to resume after the Muslim holiday of Id al-Adha, which began Friday. Expectations that the deal may have been concluded earlier were not fulfilled as negotiators failed to agree on the identity of some of the prisoners to be released, and on what terms.

Separately, the Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, approved the building of 28 public and educational institutions in Jewish settlements in the West Bank late Thursday, saying they were meant to be completed by the beginning of the new school year in September 2010.

At the same time, he instructed the Israeli military authorities in the West Bank to issue a temporary order freezing other new building starts in the settlements, in line with an announcement Wednesday by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Netanyahu said that he was suspending new residential building for a period of 10 months, but that the moratorium would not affect construction already under way and would not include "the schools, the kindergartens, the synagogues and public buildings necessary for the continuation of normal life over the period of the suspension."

He also said the moratorium would not apply to Jerusalem. Israel claims sovereignty over the whole of the city; the Palestinians want the eastern part as the capital of a future state.

Barak said that in announcing the suspension, the Israelis had acted in coordination with the United States and in line with Israeli-American understandings.

According to those understandings, the number of new public buildings to go up over the next 10 months is supposed to be limited to 28.

The Obama administration's special envoy for the Middle East, George J. Mitchell, called the settlement housing halt "positive" and said "the steps announced by the prime minister are significant and could have substantial impact on the ground."

Netanyahu and Barak said the freeze was part of the effort to restart peace talks with the Palestinian leadership of the West Bank led by President Mahmoud Abbas, but Palestinian leaders said it was not enough.